


No Justice series

by josephina_x



Category: Smallville
Genre: (I mean what happens in Chapter 1 in case that's unclear), (because of Red Kryptonite), (hence the upgrade to M rating for the entire fic), (may end up Clark/Lex), (please note that there is some borderline-explicit material in Ch. 1), (sorry about that), (starts off Clark/Lois), (the rest of the fic is Teen-and-up), Gen, Infidelity, Lex Knows Clark is Superman, Lex remembers (no memory loss), Post-Series, Pre-Slash, Red Kryptonite, justice league - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cracktastic fic series that starts with a red-K Clark who's been dosed multiple times recently, a worried League, an off-balance Lex, and a very unhappy Lois. Then the remnants of Veritas get involved and things get worse before they get better. There's a lot of Lex being treated horribly (what else is new?) and you may start feeling a little sorry for Lois as the pre-Clex moves towards Clex. She's not about to go down without a fight, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bad Boys And Punishment

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: No Justice series (1-6,7/?, not complete)  
> Title(s): "Bad Boys And Punishment", "Wherein The League Gets TMI", "The Fiancé Versus The Bad Boy, Round 1 -- Fight!", "Wherein A Trap Is Sprung", "Timeout, Back To Your Corners", "Wherein Lois Does Not Get Shot", "The Unholy Alliance on Shaky Ground"  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: pre-Clex, eventual Clex  
> Rating: R (to be safe)  
> Spoilers: through the entire series, takes place after the end of the show (after Apocalypse and before the seven years later). Background past canon necessary for understanding includes Tess and Lex both being saved by Superman after Apocalypse (Tess fully healed; Lex has his memory back).  
> Word count: 7150+ words in (1-6), 2350+ words in (7)  
> Summary: Cracktastic fic series that starts with a red-K Clark who's been dosed multiple times recently, a worried League, an off-balance Lex, and a very unhappy Lois. Then the remnants of Veritas get involved and things get worse before they get better. There's a lot of Lex being treated horribly (what else is new?) and you may start feeling a little sorry for Lois as the pre-Clex moves towards Clex. She's not about to go down without a fight, though.  
> Warnings: Unbeta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
> 
> AN:
> 
> I really really need to write something... for work (but well, I need to just write _anything_ at this point to get past the procrastination). So I wrote this instead. Single-prompt fills for my (first) Clexmas bingo card galore! I'll come back and fix the formatting later. Formatting is now fixed. Yay! (Yes, it is all pre-Clex fast-approaching proper Clex outright. There's a good bit of alpha-(fe)male posturing between Lex and Lois along the way, though.) Yay for Smallville!
> 
> Also, this is an attempt at something more action-y than dramedy. Hopefully it works out somewhat :)
> 
> Comments are the awesome! (even if it's just that you read... and/or hated it, though I'd really like to know what you don't like if that's the case)
> 
> (1-6)  
> For the 2011 [clexmas](http://clexmas.livejournal.com) Bingo! Challenge  
> Shape: Individual Fill (to-be Blackout, eventually, we hope)  
> Prompts: Dirty Talk, "Heat/Hot Days/Sweaty", "Kryptonite, Pink/Purple/other", "Flying/Floating", "Tight Spaces/Trapped", Bad Day
> 
> (7)  
> For the 2011 [clexmas](http://clexmas.livejournal.com) Bingo! Challenge  
> Shape: Individual Fill (to-be Blackout, eventually, we hope)  
> Prompts: Wild Card
> 
> #8 in the series is half-done or so already at ~1050 words. I hope to get that one done later today/tonight. I have another 9 prompts or so to go in this series. The AU's and things are obviously gonna have to be separate AU's and things, unless I wanna get weird and start having them visit the other Mirror Universes at some point. ...Hmmm, actually... *eg*
> 
> Originally posted to LJ on 2011-10-23 and 2011-10-25 here: [link](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com/6357.html) and [link](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com/6532.html).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red-K Clark learns something about Lex. And then gets cockblocked by the League.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Dirty Talk -- 850+ words

~*~*~*~*~*~

"You've been a bad, bad boy, Lex."

Lex gave Clark a sidelong glance as Kent sauntered up to him in black leather. All black leather. And no shirt...

"Ah," he dissembled, turning and trying to find his balance, glancing over Clark's whole frame, looking for the depressingly all-too-familiar glint of red Kryptonite.

Clark apparently took the once-over the wrong way, leering and gliding his way over like the large powerful predator that he usually wasn't. He infringed on Lex's personal space like it had never even existed in the first place.

Lex was hard pressed to stand his ground rather than take a step back. Or run for the door. He merely tilted his head up and raised his eyebrows slightly, affecting a bored staid gaze back.

He pointedly did _not_ spend any of his attention on the guard who was moaning on the floor by the entrance to the conference room, suffering from a superpowered slap to the head. Or the doors wrenched out of the doorframe littering the floor behind him. Or the various board members clustered around the table in various stages of shock, the smarter and more survival-inclined of whom looked to be edging towards the door and freedom.

"Ohmygod, is that Superman?" one of the board members whispered.

Clark's eyes shifted over immediately -- damn super-hearing anyway -- growled, and set off a round of heat vision over everyone's heads... given that they were ducking and running and screaming to get away.

Lex slowly closed his eyes and tried not to wince.

Finally, the room was clear except for the smoldering wisps of smoke coming from the (mostly) fireproof walls and the charred tracks running across the surface of the new-age all plastic-and-metal conference table.

Lex could only hope the entire floor was clear. It seemed to be, from the sounds of things. There weren't any moans coming from the guard anymore.

He opened his eyes and met red ones.

Clark stepped even closer, which Lex had not thought possible. He could almost feel the heat coming off of Clark's skin, and a detached part of his mind wondered if elevated body temperature was normal for Kryptonians when under the influence of the Red.

"Alone at last," Clark sighed happily, pupils blown wide. He flexed his shoulders slightly and leaned down a little.

"So, where were we?" he whispered next to Lex's right ear.

He desperately clenched down on a shiver.

"Ah, yes. You've been a very, very bad boy, Lex. Very bad, for _such_ a long time," Clark turned slightly and whispered directly into his ear, the warm-cool breath sending shivers down his spine that he could no longer suppress. He paused, then added, lowly. "You deserve to be punished."

Lex's cock jumped.

Clark drew back, his brows furrowed slightly, searching Lex's face. Lex was sure that he looked cool and unaffected as chilled marble, but Clark must have seen something in his demeanor because he suddenly got a very wide, very bright grin. Not a Clark grin, though. A Kal grin.

Oh god. Clark had been close enough to feel that. But he shouldn't have felt that, he couldn't have felt--

Lex moaned slightly as Clark's right hand cupped -- no, _encompassed_ \-- his entire groin -- balls, cock, all of it.

Clark's eyes narrowed slightly, calculating and sharp in a way they never were, never should be -- and he pressed, hard.

A whine escaped Lex's throat and he backed up a step.

...No he didn't, the damn table was in the way and Clark's other hand was around his back, making it impossible to move.

"Hmmmm," Clark -- no, Kal -- mused. There was no Clark here. Clark would never-- There was no Clark here, and no Alien, either.

He was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble.

"Yes, you are," Kal chuckled, and oh god, had he said that out loud?

"Moaned, and yes." Kal looked amused. He increased the pressure and slid his hand ever so slightly downwards in the smallest of strokes. "Really, Lex, you should have said something. Really should have." He was scant millimeters away now, if that, nearly full-body pressed up against him. "There are far better ways to get my attention, you know." He finished the casual, lazy, absolutely maddeningly slow downward stroke of his hand and started upward.

Lex whimpered.

Glass shattered.

Lex's knees hit the floor as he collapsed bonelessly.

After panting for a few eternal seconds or so, he levered himself upwards with hands and elbows with no small amount of effort and turned his head to look out at the Metropolis skyline.

Martian Manhunter, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman were all swooping about, fighting with a black figure across the wide blue expanse. Kal.

He lay even odds that it had been the Themyscirian who'd performed the smash-and-grab. In his experience, Amazons were not known for their subtlety.

This had been the third time this week that he had been approached by a Red-enhanced 'Superman', but this time it had gone too far by far. He was going to have to break his rule about never, ever, _ever_ doing anything that might possibly help the Justice League or any of their particularly inane, hypocritical brand of superfriends.

He really, _really_ needed to find out who was doing this.

Before it killed him.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	2. Wherein The League Gets TMI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex's secret is out. Also, Lex has bad timing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Heat/Hot Days/Sweaty" -- 550+ words

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Don't feel so good," Clark moaned, shifting on the couch. Most of the League was spread around him in little half-arcs, neatly filling up the main room of the Watchtower. Rarely were they all in one place. Chloe wished that they had all gathered under less auspicious circumstances.

"He's pretty out of it, isn't he..." Bart half-asked, shifting from foot-to-foot nervously, almost at super-speed.

Chloe grimaced as she patted at Clark's head with a cool, damp washcloth. "Red-K spiked drugs will do that to him."

Clark tossed and turned as he lay spread out on the couch -- well, 'tossing and turning' for him, at least, who had learned over years to suppress his abilities even when not entirely conscious. Especially when not entirely conscious. He was sweating buckets, which was usually a good sign. Chloe hoped that he was close to having worked the latest dose out of his system.

"How is he being exposed anyway?" Lois groused, irate.

Tess jumped in. "We're fairly sure that it has to be airborne. Probably a dust, or some bioengineered red-K enhanced mold spores..." she trailed off as Lois spun on her heel and stalked up to her.

"And where is he being exposed? This has been going on for weeks! Three weeks! And each time it's only gotten worse!" She rounded on Batman. "You're the detective, aren't you? haven't you checked out every place he's been? Taken samples and all that science-y crap that you do?" Turned to Zatanna. "Cast spells of discovery or protection that actually _work_." Glared at the three powerhouses that had recaptured and restrained him yet again earlier. "Actually _noticed_ when he started acting off _again_ when you were _supposed to be keeping an eye on him_ and stop him before he did something stupid." She rounded on pretty much everyone. "How the hell have you all not figured this out yet?! An entire cadre of heroes, and you, you--" she sputtered off, now looking torn between fury and tears.

There was silence for awhile. A lot of awkward shuffling and shifting. Lois could be scary when she put her mind to it. So far, the only breaks they'd had in this mess had come from her. Unfortunately, so far they'd also all led to dead ends. Small wonder she was infuriated.

Clark shifted and flinched and mumbled something nearly unintelligible and Lex's name. Her head whipped around. No, he couldn't have just said...

She glanced up at the others, and they all looked down at him, then her with open shock.

Chloe swallowed hard. Apparently that mumble hadn't been nearly as quiet or unintelligible as she'd thought. She glanced over at Lois, who had blanched.

Lois stood stock-still.

Then, she said, slowly, all-too-quietly, "What did he just say?"

Nobody breathed.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

Chloe nearly jumped out of her skin. Literally everyone in the League was already here, there wasn't anyone else with access--

She craned her neck, twisted her head to look over her shoulder and her eyes went wide.

Lex Luthor was standing in the elevator car. He strode into the room.

She should have been raging over the fact that _Lex Luthor_ was striding in like he owned the place. That he had somehow circumvented her security measures and that their entire team had been compromised. That he knew the location of their center of operations in the first place. That he had the gall to try and break in at all. But all Chloe could think, hysterically, was that he had the worst timing _ever_.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. The Fiancé Versus The Bad Boy, Round 1 -- Fight!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex 2, Lois 1, The League -27. Clark always wins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Kryptonite, Pink/Purple/other" -- 1900+ words

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex not only strode right into the Watchtower, base of operations for the Justice League, like he owned the place, but also acted as though he had no fear of reprisal from any of all and sundry gathered within.

Stupid.

Chloe saw Oliver tense and worried for a moment, before she realized that he was splitting his attention between watching Luthor and watching Black Canary, who looked fit to jump him and rip his head off. Glancing around, she saw similar divides between members -- those who abhorred the idea of taking life preparing to stop those who Luthor himself had pushed well past that point at some stage.

Nobody looked paired off with Lois. Lois wouldn't kill him. Lois looked fit to do far worse than kill him.

He was holding something. Chloe didn't have time to yell a warning before he tossed it at her cousin.

Lois deftly caught the package one-handed. She brought it up to look at it and frowned at the oriental characters before she apparently deciphered their meaning. Chloe got it from staring at the picture on the package facing away from her cousin.

"Face masks?" Lois asked, warily.

"He's being exposed to red Kryptonite through an airborne vector, isn't he?" It wasn't a question. Damn him! --did he have the place bugged? A backdoor in the computer system? Was that how he'd gotten in in the first place? "These will filter anything from dust and pollen to bacteria and virii if he maintains a careful seal against his face, though it won't do much good if it becomes saturated or if he becomes coated with a fine film of the Red and starts absorbing it through his skin."

"And we explain this how?" Lois looked halfway disgusted and spoke in an icy tone.

Luthor tossed her another package. Hello Kitty stickers and a small bobblehead doll. "Clark develops a sudden lack of fear at sharing his recent deep and abiding love of Japanese culture. Face masks are used quite frequently in Japan by city dwellers when sickness is rampant due to concern for others well-being in close-quarters office work. He's play-acted at being sick before, and in his current state," he waved a hand at Clark on the couch, softly groaning and sweating badly, "I doubt that he'll have a hard time convincing anyone he's not feeling well once he's back on his feet again." He paused a moment as he came to a stop at the foot of the couch. "He can bond a little with Miss Grant over it," he smirked, "I hear that he's not been getting well-along with his partner lately." And Chloe winced as Lois bristled -- the last cut both ways.

Chloe wrung out the washcloth and doused it in cool water again, glancing up at them both. As she started to pat at Clark's head again, she got a look from Luthor, then a glance to Lois and back again plus another smirk, which she interpreted as a rather snarky, 'Shouldn't his _fiance_ be doing that?' She attempted to ignore that.

"Superman of course will have to take an undetermined leave from his self-appointed duties until this situation is resolved," Luthor ended, addressing the room at large. Chloe heard the sarcastic quotes around the name. He never did like Lois' hero name for Clark, and --holy shit, wasn't he not supposed to remember who Clark was?!? Chloe glanced over at Tess, who was as pale as a sheet and trembling slightly. She must've gotten it from the beginning, when he'd first started out discussing Clark.

It took a few more moments for everyone to catch up to that fact. Chloe was rather surprised to see everyone's reactions. Some looked panicked. Some looked mad as hell. Some looked... completely unsurprised, and she was going to have one hell of a talk with Victor and Bart after they'd all dealt with Luthor's little Tower-crashing.

Apparently, the League was perfectly willing to let Lois take point on this one. Some of them had even unobtrusively backed away a little. Smart, because Chloe knew _she_ sure as hell wouldn't want to get between those two right now. Or ever.

"Are you sure it's red-K?" Lois asked lightly, watching Luthor critically.

Luthor... frowned a little at her. "His reactions to-date have been consistent with such exposure." Chloe could almost hear the mental, tacked on 'Why?' that he was apparently refusing to ask, and wondered if she was ascribing human reactions to him where there were none.

"Actually, he might be hallucinating," Lois added, not taking her eyes off of the bald billionaire.

Luthor... went very still.

"When did this start?" he asked quietly.

"This afternoon." Lois was gearing up to pop the unwelcome question that Clark's semi-conscious mutterings had shoved into everyone's minds like a jagged icepick, like it or not. Very, very not.

Luthor closed his eyes, clenched his jaw, and looked like he wanted to strangle everyone in the room.

Lois got that mad gleam in her eye that she always got when she was about to pounce on something particularly nasty... for the victim. She took a breath...

"I thought you had gotten rid of BrainIAC," Luthor ground out.

You could hear a pin drop.

Lois stalled out, eyes slightly wide. "Silver-K--"

"--is BrainIAC. It's metallic, not crystalline. It isn't naturally-occurring. And the damn thing can partially direct the effects somehow." He opened his eyes and glared. If he'd been Kryptonian, they'd have been glowing red.

Chloe decided that she had to intervene. Unfortunately. She just hoped that Oliver wouldn't have to jump in to save her, because then the whole thing would become a huge free-for-all and... Luthor wouldn't have come in without backup or a Plan, it would get _ugly_.

"It can't be Brainiac." She tensed as two sets of eyes pinned her in place. Good thing she was used to dealing with beings with godlike abilities, or she'd be unable to get a word out under the sudden scrutiny. "Kal's come into the effects when in shielded locations before, at least five times over the last three weeks. It can't be being triggered through wireless activation; it has to be through repeated exposure." She locked eyes with Luthor, stare-for-stare. "And we _did_ get rid of him."

She wasn't sure how long Luthor met and held her gaze, but when he finally looked away she felt as if she'd run a marathon with an elephant on her back. He nodded once to himself, and for the first time in a long time Chloe wondered if maybe he still had some shreds of humanity left in him somewhere.

Or he just didn't like the idea of an alien computer walking all over him again.

She wondered if that bit about the silver-K was true, though. She'd have to add it to the database as "unconfirmed", regardless. She couldn't even tack on "untrustworthy source", damn him -- he usually didn't lie about things like this. At least, she'd never caught him at it yet. The bastard.

"What makes you think you can tell Superman what to do?" Lois asked, low and dangerous, arms folded across her chest. She'd certainly gotten back more than her second wind.

Luthor literally sneered at her. "He's my nemesis." Chloe's eyes widened at the slight emphasis -- had anyone else heard that? _His_ \--?! "The Kryptonian _will_ be taking a protracted 'holiday', one way or another."

No, apparently it had been just her and Lois, the way she saw her cousin's eyes narrow. Everyone else seemed too caught up in the latter threat to notice, or maybe they just didn't know Lex as well as she did, and that thought nearly made her gag. Scuffling and hands at elbows and shoulders occurred behind her, before everyone settled again, waiting and watching. She glanced down and wiped at Clark's brow a little more. He'd gotten quieter and his breathing had evened out a bit, which was good.

Lois looked Luthor over. Looked about to say something, then stopped. And got a thin smile. A very, very thin smile.

Warning bells went off in Chloe's head.

"I think I can convince him to stay off the job for awhile," Lois started. Luthor's eyes narrowed slightly, but he nodded once and spun on his heel, obviously preparing to go, his point apparently having been made. Chloe couldn't believe that he thought he'd actually be able to turn his back on them all and just walk out of here.

"But," Lois added, and he paused where he was, "you will help with tracing down the cause of this."

Oh hell. Lois did _not_ just give an ultimatum to--

Luthor tensed and turned again to fully face her. "I will _not_ work with the League--" he spat out.

"Good."

Luthor ground to a halt, blinking and reigning it in. Chloe'd never seen him look so startled. For him. She was pretty sure that that expression would look like psychotic rage on anyone else. "What?"

"The League have been idiots on this. You're working with me."

"Like hell!"

Lois and Luthor turned to Oliver. To his credit, her husband managed not to wilt under their combined glare.

"Stay out of this," "--Oliver!" "--Queen." they yelled and hissed at him, respectively. Then they glared at each other again. Chloe felt a little faint.

Oh god, they wouldn't, would they? They couldn't! They'd kill each other within minutes. And that was before what Clark had--

"What makes you think you can contribute anything substantial to my efforts?" Lex casually snarled out, acting amused.

"You don't know what's wrong with him yet. Not for sure. The silver-K idea--"

"Misinformation," Lex waved off. "With my resources--" ...wait, Luthor was still engaging Lois? She'd hooked him somehow?

"Which you aren't using to the fullest extent," Lois said carefully, with a smile that was all teeth.

Luthor paused, eyes narrowed as he examined her as a cat did a very strange mouse. "Explain."

"You know who Superman is, but you don't want anyone else to." And Lois got that concept now, after a lot of explaining from Clark on the subject of Toymaster. "You don't dare to let anyone research what's going on, because he's usually dosed when he's out of uniform, and then the secret would be out." She squared her shoulders and continued brazenly. "Case-in-point: you still own the Daily Planet, but you obviously haven't been using any reporters to track down information for you," she added, tongue-in-cheek and with dark amusement.

Luthor eyes glinted cold... but he didn't deny any of it. He slid his hands into his pants pockets and leaned back slightly, shoulders loosening. Oh god, he _was_ hooked. "I have resources you know nothing about, loyal to me and only me. And it's not as though I cannot simply... convince otherwise those who might be less-inclined to be... discreet." Thoughts of death squads danced in Chloe's head for a moment, but she didn't let herself be distracted by the veiled threats and innuendos because...

He was hooked, and she was _playing_ him, because Chloe had once overheard the middle of a private conversation that she had not wanted to hear, and it had been Clark trying to explain Lex and challenges to Lois, and how you did not want to do that because he never, ever backed down from one. And though Chloe knew it was coming like an oncoming trainwreck with no heroes in sight, she couldn't stop Lois' challenge: "So you're really planning on _delegating_? He's _your_ nemesis, after all."

It had all the grace of a train bearing down on them all, too, and Chloe could see in the shift of his demeanor and gaze that Luthor _knew_. He knew _exactly_ what Lois was doing, but-- Lex tilted his head up slightly, considering.

Oh no. Lane and Luthor against the world?

Lex smirked. And then said, with great deliberation, "What do you know so far?"

The unholy alliance was firmly cemented.

And then all hell broke loose.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	4. Wherein A Trap Is Sprung

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex saves people and nobody says thank you. Also, gravity sucks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Flying/Floating" -- 1750+ words

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Trap--" Lex coughed. "A fucking," he got caught up in another coughing jag, "goddamn fucking _trap_ ," he ended tightly.

Lois was curled next to him under the computer table on the floor. What had been the floor. It had gigantic gaping holes in it and was tilted at an odd angle, so it may not actually qualify as much more than a ledge anymore. He could see down several stories, nearly straight down to the ground floor in spots. Wires hung and sparked, and he winced when one set jumped, spat, and then caught against a metal... something that was now unrecognizable and charred the wood floor until it smoked and Lex saw flames start to lick up...

Something moved in the corner of his eye and he realized that it was the couch, slowly sliding towards one of the aforementioned giant gaping holes. Which it would fit through.

"No. No no nonono!" he snarled, failing to get to his feet the first few times, stumbling forward, and tried to stop the motion of the couch, grabbing at the side. But it was too late, the edge had tipped over the side of the hole. He frantically let go and grabbed for Clark's prone form instead, looping his hands under Clark's arms and lifting hard.

Adrenaline did not fail him -- he managed to pull Clark up and over the end of the couch before it finished sliding down into the abyss and fell and fell and fell...

Lex panted on the floor and pulled Clark farther away from the edge, back towards Lois, who wasn't moving yet. She was splayed out in a loosely curled ball, and he felt slightly sick looking at her. He tried very hard not to think about what had almost happened. Clark was suffering from the final stages of red-K poisoning, which usually left him weak, vulnerable. Powerless. If he had slid over the edge...

The tower shook as something hit, or exploded. Maybe both. Lex shivered and covered Clark's body with his own, before forcing himself to unfold slowly, too slowly, and try to gage their surroundings better. They needed to get out of this death trap before...

He saw a flicker of movement, and turned abruptly, startling and reaching for a gun. It took only a split-second to realize it was only another body, shifting, rolling away from him.

The wrong way. Over the edge.

Lex shot forward without thought, both hands out, grabbing at air. Too late --no!

He managed to shove himself forward further still, head and arms down over the edge, and grab a wrist. Then came the sudden shock at pulling them up short. Inertia hit and he almost went over the side himself.

He scrabbled one-handed and slid forward more slowly, found some purchase somehow and stopped. His left arm ached at the shoulder, and thank god he hadn't dislocated it or he never would've kept hold of--

He blinked as he looked down.

Chloe.

He was holding onto Chloe.

He stared down at her unconscious form and wondered just what the hell he was doing.

He could let her go. No-one else was here, conscious, watching...

He closed his eyes, grimaced--

\--and flinched and tightened his hold on her as another explosion went off and everything shook again. Damnit.

Lex slowly backed up across the floor, keeping a firm grip around her wrist.

Motion next to him, and Lois, hair all askew, looking like hell, reached down and grabbed ahold of Chloe's shirt at the shoulders.

They both dragged her back up together. Crawling, keeping their heads down, they drew her over to where Clark was lying still.

Clark looked like death-warmed-over, thrice. Chloe had a bleeding head wound and was only now starting to stir. Lex wondered if he himself looked any better.

"What the hell," Lois said muzzily, once they'd gotten their small troupe sorted out under the table. Possible concussion, Lex noted.

"Explosions. An attack. You were all _here_ ," he breathed out, trying to get his brain working again. He'd been in a state for days, red-K Clark always rattled him in ways he didn't like to think about. Made him want... too much. The impossible. It wasn't really him; Lex had to remind himself.

Lex shook his head and for a broken second almost thought something rattled. Recentered. This wasn't an attack on Lex, though god knew he'd been at the center of many, especially lately -- this time, it had been an attack on the League, he was sure of it. "You were all here, it was the perfect opportunity to attack. Set a trap. Oh, god. They did it on purpose." He looked at Lois with dawning horror. "Kal-El has a problem and you all come running. All you have to do is, is just make _sure_ he has a big enough problem and, and this time, this time you _all_ came running." A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to break out of his throat. He was getting stupid and complacent in his studies -- he'd known about the Tower for a long time, having traced the money trail. Knowing about Isis and Queen being Green Arrow and Tess' ties had made it easy to find, multiple paths leading to the same place, and really, why hadn't they at least made a minimal effort to _try_ and cover up the sources of supplies and contractors used? It was child's play, given that Queen Industries, LuthorCorp, and LexCorp were still intertwined like a three-headed hydra, damn Oliver and Tess for being a pair of self-righteous pains-in-his-ass otherwise; he still had access to all the records. How stupid did they think he was?

Though maybe he shouldn't be feeling irate about others' perceptions of his level of stupidity. He'd never acted on the knowledge of their not-so-secret meeting place before today, for obvious reasons, but that didn't mean that others wouldn't. It didn't mean that others who suspected its existence but didn't know of its location wouldn't think of other ways to suss it out. And he hadn't done anything one way or the other to think through those weaknesses, poke and prod any of them into fixing them. A weakness in the Watchtower was a weakness of Clark's, and as his nemesis he had a responsibility to find and stab at all of those soft spots until Clark learned his damn lessons and they no longer existed to be exploited. It was a desperate failure on his part.

He winced as another explosion rocked the building and resisted the urge to let his head sink down against Clark's chest, but only barely.

"You... you did this." Lex glanced up and saw Chloe glaring at him over Clark's prone body, angry tears in her eyes. "You, you bastard," she snarled, launching herself over Clark at him. Her hands closed around his neck.

Lex clawed at her hands, and his vision started to grey out. Then he was left gasping and wheezing for breath on the floor, staring in shock.

Unbelievably, Lois had Chloe in a headlock and was hissing at her to stop. Finally, her mad cousin broke down in tears and sagged against her.

He belatedly realized that he could've pulled out a gun and shot her. He had two.

Another explosion and breaking, cracking noises followed. He shivered.

'We need to get out of here," he realized out loud. And, looking around, they were more than a little screwed. They were the only ones left inside, upstairs, alive, and from the circular sections of what remained of the floor it looked like Green Lantern was owed a thank you for that. There looked -- well, sounded -- to be fighting going on in the lower levels. Outside, the fighting was worse. But the flyers were getting hammered, and from the damage to the top floor where they were stuck, the only way they were getting out was by flying.

"So I'll fly us down instead of out," Clark said, leaning against his shoulder but still sitting nonetheless, and when had he woken up, let alone gotten himself upright? "Inside the building to the ground floor. If we get to the stairs and go down, we'll be ok. It's a bomb shelter underneath, and even if the building collapses..."

"Can you do that?" Lois asked, worried that he might not be able to keep all four of them in the air.

Clark was obviously still in very bad shape, still looked like death warmed over, but he nodded. "Everybody grab on to me."

Lex got his left arm, Chloe his right. Lois in the middle between them to prevent further strangulation of male Luthors.

Lex wrapped his arms around all three of them anyway, and tucked his legs under Lois, despite the glare he received from Chloe. He didn't want to risk Lois dropping from between them just because Sullivan couldn't handle a little contact; he might need her investigative skills later. He doubted that the fighters and Clark's poisoners were one and the same; those sorts of skills usually didn't overlap. There'd still be work to be done after the battle to root out the entire network -- it would have had to be a network, a handful of people couldn't accomplish that they had under _three weeks_ of League scrutiny, as loathe as he was to admit that they weren't complete idiots, and how the hell had _he_ of all people missed the first week of red-K issues? He'd only known about the last two weeks of problems.

"Ok," Clark said quietly, steeling himself. He slowly lifted up from the floor, and dangled them over the edge. Lex had a second of pure panic that he barely quashed before Clark started slowly floating them downwards.

They picked up speed a little as they went, and though it was obvious that Clark was controlling and slowing their descent while avoiding the worst of the firefight, Lex still had the horrible fear that they would suddenly drop like a rock at any moment.

He had finally nearly convinced himself otherwise when a stray laser shot struck a glancing blow to the side of Clark's head. In slow motion, he saw Clark's gaze go distant, then unfocused, and then...

Then gravity reasserted itself.

Lex grabbed at them spasmodically, like a drowning man to a lifevest, and pure denial grabbed him back just as hard.

As they fell, he started to shake, and strained upwards with all his will, for all the good that wishing and praying and demanding and utterly resisting reality could help him, help them now.

He screamed and screamed and screamed all the way down.

Everything went black.

They hit the ground floor hard.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: Right here is where I really start taking liberties with Smallville-izing the DCU crack; no real basis in SV!canon for this particular plot point, but then one could say the same thing re: Tess and Davis pre-season 8...)


	5. Timeout, Back To Your Corners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois is the better (wo)man. Lex causes problems even while unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Tight Spaces/Trapped" -- 1600+ words

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lois was shivering and cold. By rights she should be scared and worried as hell, but she wasn't.

Clark had suffered a worse fall, with a blue-K knife in his belly, no less, and come out of it all right, looking no worse for wear then than he did now. So she wasn't worried, so long as he got enough sunlight and enough rest to have a chance to recover. She lit up another artificial sun lamp and positioned it so it shone directly onto Clark's chest.

She and Chloe had managed to drag Clark down into the sublevel together, despite the fact that Lois was sure that her right arm was broken and it looked like Chloe had fractured something in her left leg.

Chloe had adamantly refused to go back up to help her retrieve Lex.

Lois had had to make the long long climb back up the stairs herself, the walls shaking around her and thundering booms echoing down the stairwell and plaster falling. She tried to tell herself it wasn't a warzone and she wasn't going to get shot, but it was a desperate lie. She had almost turned around and went back down twice. She had almost stopped and sat down where she was, too tired and in too much pain to care about moving, three more times before she had made it back to the ground floor.

Lex had still been there, lying where he'd hit. He hadn't moved, and he hadn't yet been smashed into a bloody smear by falling debris.

Lois had shivered again as she slid her left arm under his own, wrapped it around his ribcage -- startled for a moment, surprised that he was so much thinner than he looked -- and she'd started dragging him back the way she'd come.

She hadn't wanted to do that, but she had owed him. Chloe would be dead, if not for him. If he hadn't grabbed her upstairs... and the worst part of it was, he hadn't hesitated. She'd been drifting in and out while he'd grabbed Clark from the couch, she only remembered snatches of that. But she'd been awake, seen his reaction when he'd gone after Chloe. Seen the unguarded emotions cross his face when he had realized what he'd done, seen the exact moment the thought occurred to him that he could kill her by simply letting go, doing nothing. No-one would even have been able to say it would have been on purpose, he could've lost his grip without meaning to, or simply pretended he'd never noticed at all...

She'd seen him decide 'to hell with it' and start pulling her up anyway.

Lois wondered if he would have decided differently if Chloe had been looking him in the eye, wide-awake.

She wondered what kind of person would help someone so selflessly by instinct, would make the decision to help someone helpless on purpose if they thought no-one was watching... but in the full light of day would do their damned best to tear down anyone who looked like they were strong enough to oppose them.

It made her head ache.

But she'd managed to drag him to the staircase and down them, much easier than Clark, because apparently Luthor bastards weighed far less than good solid dependable Kent men. She'd managed to convince Chloe to open the damned door. That almost hadn't happened. Chloe had almost left her locked out there, in the unsheltered bottom of the stairwell, to die. Her own cousin. Because she'd been trying to help a Luthor. A supposedly irredeemably-tainted Luthor.

Yet, Chloe would be dead, if not for him. They would _all_ be dead, if not for him.

That was the thing that should be scaring her, but wasn't.

Clark had been out from the shot. They'd been up at least twelve stories still. Lois had done nothing but pray that Clark would be ok, knowing that the rest of them would certainly die from the fall. Chloe had babbled incoherently in her ear. No-one was going to save them.

Lex had started screaming. The world had started going dark.

And they'd started slowing down.

They'd still hit, and hit hard, but they were all alive. They'd survived.

Clark had absorbed most of the impact, but they'd still all tumbled off of him with plenty of velocity, arms and legs and elbows and hands and torso and head still hitting in rapid succession with too much force.

She'd hit her head so hard she'd seen stars.

And black shadows encroaching on everything in her vision like dark ribbons.

It had taken her a few moments to realize that the latter wasn't a visual effect from a concussion or something, it was real.

She'd unsteadily pushed herself up off of the floor, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, who to thank, because it had to be some superpowered newcomer, she'd never heard of anyone who could manipulate black energy before...

And she'd seen the streamers of dark slowly fall to the ground and pool around Lex like he was the center of a spotlight of shadow.

Chloe had gotten a good look at him too soon and started shrieking about Darkseid and tainting and evil and Lois had had to slap her to make her shut up before she drew the attention of whoever the hell was still above them with the laser gun.

For one thing, he hadn't had the Omega symbol on his forehead, and those usually tended to burn rather bright when Darkseid's lesser minions used their limited powers, from what Kara had told her before she'd left. His eyes also had never turned black like Oliver's had when he'd been under the influence, and she was pretty sure that saving Clark's life so that he could be a vessel for the dark would have merited direct intervention from Darkseid, since the dark god was only temporarily banished, not permanently defeated.

And she was also pretty sure that Lex would've had to have counted as a lesser minion, because she'd met one of his minion-prophets or whatever, and from her own observations, plus the descriptions she'd heard of the two others, none of them would've tried to save anyone else's skin but their own. Watched her, her crazy-but-love-her-anyway cousin, and Clark fall to their deaths maybe, and laugh at the sight? Sure. But scream their heads off in sheer terror like he had? No.

For another -- again -- she'd met one of Darkseid's minions while he had been carrying the master himself, and been exposed to that darkness, luckily turned out to be immune herself. She knew what it felt like, being near it, touching it. This wasn't it. This might be darkness, _a_ darkness, but there was nothing malevolent or evil about it. It seemed almost neutral, with a coolness that was weirdly warm, which made no sense because -- shadows. Didn't really have a temperature to take.

Chloe was off in the corner of the room, sitting under a sunlamp all her own with her knees drawn up to her chest, refusing to move it over to shine on Clark. She'd hit her head pretty hard, and given her earlier injury, Lois was trying to be sympathetic, but it was hard. Chloe wasn't listening to her at all, but at least she was being quiet and not trying to kill Lex.

Lex, who was laid out flat on the floor at the other end of the room, well away from the sunlamps.

Lois had done that on purpose, once she'd realized that the shadows from before hadn't completely gone away, but did curl up and fade away when exposed to the light from the lamps.

Which was why Chloe had co-opted one all for herself, claiming that she didn't want to be tested and tempted by the darkness while she was asleep.

Lois finished fiddling with the last of the sunlamps one-handed. She rearranged Clark's hands a little more and played with his hair a little bit, then sighed and slowly shifted her way across the floor back over to Lex.

She felt it when she'd moved into his little pool of shadow-ribbons, and not just the normal dark shadows in this side of the room. They... tickled a little, almost.

She reached her fingers down and drew them around close to the floor and half-felt, half-saw eddies of lighter and darker shadow trail through them.

He was looking better. Paler, but less pained and less exhausted. His shadows looked a little stronger, like they were drawing strength from the dark shadow of the room, and with the way they were licking up the sides of his body at times, she got the overall impression that the dark shadows of the room were somehow helping him the same way the light was helping Clark.

She lightly trailed her fingertips across his forehead in the lightest of touches, and wondered if he'd even realized what he'd done. If he would've chosen to do it, knowing that he could, knowing what would happen. That they'd all have been all right.

She wondered if this was who Clark saw when he talked about his best friend, the one he'd failed to save.

The floor shook, and kept shaking, and there was a horrible crashing outside the stairwell door. The ceiling groaned. Finally there was a muted silence.

Well, that was it. They were all stuck down here until Clark was better, or someone else rescued them.

Lois looked around, shivered again, still cold, and grimaced. There were plenty of boxed-up supplies down here, but she couldn't do any more than she had. She didn't have a knife on her, and she couldn't work two-handed. And Chloe, who could use both hands as far as Lois could tell, was being completely unhelpful.

Lois found herself in the very uncomfortable position of hoping that Lex Luthor would wake up soon.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	6. Wherein Lois Does Not Get Shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex freaks out. Clark comforts Lex while Lois watches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Bad Day -- 500+ words

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex woke to the world slowly.

He was cold and warm and hurt all over and _pain_ and pain meant _hell_ but it wasn't _blinding_ pain or **burning** pain and hell was supposed to be unbearable _torture_ and this was bearable it was not that bad just bad and if he wasn't in hell the where the hell _was_ he and someone was leaning over him--

He startled and spasmed and when he could think again he had his back to a wall -- a solid wall -- and he was staring at Lois and "--what the hell is going _on_ \--?" he demanded, pleaded, shakily, trying not to scream so hard he bit his lip and tasted blood.

"You're--" Lois started, reaching towards him. He shrank back.

"--dead I'm dead I fell and hit and black and-and-and--" He wrapped his hands around himself and shook. He felt like he was losing his mind, _again_ \-- and he should know because he knew what that felt like and-- and--

A warm presence dropped down next to him and leaned into him.

"--Clark--" he breathed, closing his eyes and leaning right back.

"It's ok, Lex. It's ok. You're not dead, it's ok," Clark said, and Clark wouldn't lie about something like this. There was no more lying. Ever. He'd promised. His friend--

His nemesis--

the world slipped sideways and he lost his hold because his grasp was too weak and they all hated him hated him hate-hate-hate-hate-hate

He didn't think for awhile, and then he did.

"Clark --what the hell? Happened?" he shivered and half-shrieked, clutching at him.

"Head hurts, don't remember," Clark mumbled softly.

"I do."

Lex looked over to Lois, who looked more than a little mad-irate-mad.

"Don't trust you, liar," Lex whispered with venom. Stupid fucking reporters. Instead of pulling both guns and unloading them into her lying lying face, instead he opted to settling his head against Clark's chest and listening to his heartbeat. It was nice.

"Le-ex," Clark grumbled, so Lex settled on a glare, except that made his head hurt like a million zillion tiny icepicks were being shoved in so he winced and closed his eyes.

Maybe it was hell after all, but -- Clark. Being nice. So, not.

"Hate you all," Lex grumbled back. That got him Clark's arms winding around him in a soft heavy hug and he growled a little because he had to for appearances even though he liked it lots and slowly began to drift off again.

It occurred to him that ignoring Lois in favor of Clark was probably a dumbass move because Clark wouldn't protect him from Lois because he liked Lois and there was all that sex there and whatnot so she had him by the balls anyway but he really didn't care.

There had been red-K and cockblocking and stupid League-terroristas and people trying to blow him up in explosions and people trying to kill Clark and falling to his doom and death and destruction and he was having a bad day and it was going to get worse later but for now he had Clark and it was enough.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	7. The Unholy Alliance on Shaky Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex is tired but does stuff anyway. In the end, Lois gets her way a lot, as usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Wild Card -- 2350+ words

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lois wasn't real happy about how her fiance was cuddling _Lex Luthor_ of all people, especially since Clark had been really out of it at the time -- still was -- and had gone straight to him. The man who had been trying to track down, subjugate, and now _kill_ Clark for years. Lois loved him dearly, but some days she swore he had zero survival instinct whatsoever.

Then again, with the way Luthor had been freaking out about not being dead (really? wouldn't most people be _happy_ about that?) and Clark's knee-jerk reaction to make everything better for everyone always... maybe she couldn't really blame said fiance for his actions. Especially since she'd even found herself reacting in a similar way to try and calm him down before Clark had stepped in. At least at first. Now she was really pissed off.

Clark had more-or-less ignored her for him, and the Luthor bastard had had the nerve to call her a liar. What was even more neurotic was how his words and, well, inarticulate growls, were diametrically opposed to his body language; he'd barely put up a token resistance to Clark at all.

Then again, he _was_ pretty obviously out of it. Probably concussed badly, to say the least, the way his eyes had been rolling around in their sockets when he'd first come out of it, and certainly loopy from what was obviously-in-retrospect the first use of his powers, however and whenever and wherever the hell he'd gotten them. Scooting closer, she briefly wondered if it was really his mental walls that had temporarily collapsed, or whether he was schizophrenic or something. She'd had arguments with Clark before about whether he was a psychotic sociopath or not, and given that Tess was a recovering sociopath (or simply a highly functional one) who felt 'guilt' only at being caught and didn't really care about anyone but Clark, who she'd latched onto like a limpet, she had a known basis for comparison. But Clark always swore up and down that Lex had emotions, that he knew fear, and guilt, and love and loss, but that he just kept them suppressed or well-hidden, having been taught by Lionel that showing emotion was a sign of weakness. He swore that Lex had empathy for others, but refused to show it or act on it openly because he was afraid that he would leave himself open to being taken advantage of if he did.

Given the way he'd been screaming his head off in primal fear earlier, and his reactions to Clark just now -- which, if she was being very very considerate might be called 'grumpy' on, say, Mirror-box Earth -- she was going to have to toss the 'no emotions' hypothesis out the window. Especially since he was now cuddling Clark _back_ with a really soft, pained look on his face. Because he'd passed out and couldn't pretend he was feeling otherwise.

She consoled herself with the fact that it didn't mean he wasn't still pure evil in another way -- if he was perfectly sane while choosing to do the things he did, well...

But that still didn't explain what had happened with Chloe, up in the top of the Tower. Saving his nemesis to toy with him later, sure, she could see that -- he was certainly twisted enough for it -- but saving Chloe?

She slid forward and put out a hand to shake Luthor's shoulder lightly. His eyes slitted open immediately as soon as she'd touched him, and she felt him try to control his reaction, to resist flinching away from her touch.

"Go 'way," he muttered sleepily, eyes sliding shut again. "My Clark." His shadows curled around him -- them both -- protectively.

She barely resisted the urge to haul off and punch him. "Stop that," she snapped, grabbing his arm a little harder. His eyes flew open and he tried to pull away, tugging and hissing at her.

She let go and he calmed down somewhat. "You need to stop--" Right, the idiot probably didn't even realize what he was doing-- "Clark needs to be in the light, to heal." And his shadows probably weren't helping Clark any. "Let go of him. I need to drag him back over."

Lex frowned at her, and looked past her, saw the lights. Looked back at her. Frowned again. "Your arm's broken," he stated.

"Yes, I know," Lois gritted out. It hurt like hell, and would certainly hurt worse once the shock and adrenaline wore off. At least the bone wasn't jutting out through the skin of her forearm. Chloe had been no help there, either.

"You... can't move him like that," he accused balefully, obviously not all there.

"Well, do you mind helping me? Given that we have a truce and all, until we've dropkicked the assholes who keep drugging Clark." And she'd meant for that to come out a lot more sarcastically and a lot less like a real plea for help.

Lex gave her a blank look, blinked at her, then frowned again and closed his eyes. He seemed to be struggling for a moment to wake up more fully and mentally put himself back together a little. He shook his head slightly, once. After a few breaths, he seemed much more cool and emotionless, if not entirely collected, and he grumbled slightly to himself as he shifted a bit away from an unconscious Clark, then struggled to help him slide down the wall instead of just dropping straight down like a rock. He ended up kneeling loosely next to Lois, facing Clark who was sprawled along the floor against the wall. He swayed slightly as he shrugged out of his suit jacket, then undid the cuff buttons at his wrists and started ripping the sleeves from his dress shirt. He puttered about a bit with the sleeves, ripping them into longer strips, then removed a few things from the jacket pockets and slid them into his pants pockets, while she stared at the two shoulder holsters adorning the sides of his torso and the gleaming silver twin semi-automatics snugly fit within, the several clips of ammo secured with loops and slid in the gaps, the knife sheath tucked at the small of his back...

She yelped as he suddenly snaked out a hand and grabbed her elbow, pulled her arm forward, then frowned a little and poked at it a bit with his other hand. She refrained from punching his lights out only due to the fact that she'd nearly blacked out from the pain, and that doing so would probably have led to him wrenching her arm around worse when he inevitably would have jerked backwards from the hit.

After a few more- and less-painful jabs under a clinical gaze, he said, "Hmmm," and then he wrapped his other hand carefully around her forearm down near the wrist and pulled.

Lois saw stars again -- and not the good kind -- and the next time her vision cleared her right shoulder was leaning against Lex's chest, her head was tucked under his chin, her arm was feeling _much_ better, unbelievably, and Lex was finishing up wrapping her forearm with the remnants of the second shirtsleeve. She dazedly realized that he had whipcord muscles, staring at his bare arms -- whipcord muscles with no hair, no hair at all, and he was even thinner than she'd thought earlier dragging him down the stairwell.

Then he did something with his jacket -- folds and knots -- and before she knew it she had a makeshift sling over her left shoulder, taking the weight off of her -- yup, definitely broken -- right arm.

She sighed and collapsed a little against him in relief, then realized what she was doing and pulled away abruptly, sitting bolt upright. She eyed him warily. He seemed to stifle a sigh and slowly half-crawled half-slid across the floor to Clark.

When he started tugging at his shoulders in an attempt to drag him across the floor, Lois slid over and joined in. Between the two of them they managed to get him over to the lights. By the time they had him settled, all of Lex's little shadowlets had faded away completely under the warm artificial sunlight. And it was odd, she realized, having kept a critical eye on him throughout -- she'd expected him to become suddenly fatigued, or collapse, or something -- have _some_ reaction to coming under the lights -- but for all that she could tell, all that happened was that his shoulders dropped a bit and he relaxed a little more; maybe looked slightly more sleepy, but that could be due to the concussion, because his pupils weren't focusing quite right.

Chloe was silent throughout all this, slouched against the wall, asleep, and for that Lois was grateful.

Lex finally slid away a little bit from them both, and, still fully under the lights, levered himself to the floor with a soft groan. He lay out full spread, one knee up, took a deep breath in, and let it out slowly, closing his eyes. She could almost visibly see the tension in him bleed out of every pore as he relaxed into the floor. It was a little funny -- he was making hard concrete look like a featherbed.

Or like he was lounging in a green grass field under the lazy afternoon sun, with the little readjustments he made, swinging and dropping his right hand over his chest and sliding his left arm under his head to cushion it, before settling in more. All he needed was a hat over his face to complete the picture and...

"Oh my god, you're a Kansas boy!" and she couldn't help but laugh.

Lex tilted his head towards her, stared up at her balefully and said, without any inflection at all, "So?"

Lois stopped laughing.

"I--" she started, feeling a little embarrassed. She hadn't meant it as an insult exactly -- it's not like Clark wasn't one, too, and-- What the hell was she doing?

Lex closed his eyes and waved his hand loftily through the air before letting it fall back to his chest, indicating a lazy 'Whatever, I don't care.'

Except that the way he'd tensed when she'd started laughing, maybe he did.

It nagged at her and nagged at her, and she had nothing else to take her mind off of it. She'd never really thought about it before -- he'd grown up in Metropolis, mostly, and spent a lot of time living in Smallville, as well, but regardless of all his travels elsewhere across the globe, that meant that the majority of his life he'd spent in Kansas. While Metropolis reminded her quite a bit of those East Coast cities she'd lived in at times, and her citizenry similar in their busybody urban lifestyles and habits, they really were in the middle of the Midwest, and had their odd little cultural quirks to show it. She knew from Chloe that he'd attended a New England school for his college degree -- and wasn't that weird, he'd taken biochem instead of a business major -- and that there was still some prejudice about dumb country hicks in the Ivy League schools, but she never would've ascribed that label to...

Hmm.

And supposedly Oliver and his group of rather not-so-small friends had bullied him all through Excelsior Prep, too.

She wasn't about to give Lex and Oliver and his buddies a free pass for whatever their actions were that had lead to the death of that student at Excelsior, but she began to wonder exactly what "bullying" had meant. And what may or may not have occurred in retaliation.

She also wondered what this world's Lionel had been like. She knew what the mirror-one was like firsthand, not that she'd ever wanted to, and she only really had thirdhand information on the former. Mirror-Lionel had jerked around Conner when he was Lx-13 and thought he was Lex, and jerked around Conner too, with red-K being his _first_ line of attack and control, no less. How had the real Lionel treated Lex? Clark was open to talking about Lex, mostly in pleas for tolerance if not understanding, and to please just let him handle things on his own, but he didn't like talking about Lionel at all. He didn't quite refuse to, but he shied away from it like he had some mental censure going on inside his head. She wondered if it could really possibly be that bad.

...And that was a bit too much wondering. She really didn't want to feel sorry for Lex -- regardless of past history and how he had gotten this way, he was a bastard and he did evil things to good people, and trampled over others like he didn't care at all. Maybe he was a puzzle who she'd suddenly realized that, yes, damnit, Clark was right, she was missing a lot of the pieces to, but that didn't mean that she wanted to solve him, either.

 _Yeah, just keep telling yourself that,_ she winced to herself. She could almost feel the urge sneaking up on her, ready to pounce.

She needed a distraction.

She slid over to Lex and poked him in the shoulder with a finger.

"What?" he sighed out, in an annoyed and very put-upon tone.

"I need help with the supplies."

"...What supplies?" he asked after a moment, clearly not having wanted to ask, but having been patently unable not to.

"I'm not sure, but there's a lot of boxes around, and I can't open them on my own, one-handed, even if I borrow your knife."

"Mmph," Lex replied, unhelpfully. He didn't move.

"There might be pillows and blankets. Maybe food, or water. Or pain meds." She poked him again. "Come on." She poked him again and he grimaced that time.

He slowly opened his eyes like it was a chore to do so and looked up at her with what was clearly a very tired, very male "Oh god, do I _have_ to?" look, and she resisted the mad urge to giggle.

"I'll cart things around, you just need to get them open and where I can get at them," she compromised.

Lex closed his eyes and sighed. For a long moment, she thought he was going to stay where he was, but then he grimaced and slowly levered himself up.

"Where do you want to start?" he asked grimly, like a man preparing himself for a walk to the gallows.

Lois smiled.

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
